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The Science of Liberty

Timothy Ferris, called "the best popular science writer in the English language today" by the Christian Science Monitor, makes a case for science as the inspiration behind the rise of democracy. In The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Law of Nature, he argues that the Enlightenment values inspired by the scientific revolution have led to the growth of free and democratic societies around the world.

I generally like Ferris a lot but his historical research here is problematic. English Newtonianism was closely tied to the Church of England and conservative politics. The sources of progressive politics came via the Epicurean tradition (which goes back to Democritus) and in England, via Hartley's psychology, the mildly radical politics of Priestley and Bentham, Erasmus Darwin's biology, and the early 19th C whigs. Jefferson was not only a Deist, he was a Mason and wanted to move the country to Masonry. All this, of course, was shaped by the European and Scotch enlightenment.

Your author seems to be excluding mathematics from his discussion, which explains both his belittling of Ancient Greek and Soviet scientists. Greek mathematics has served for millenia as a model of science, the Soviet Union could call some of the greatest and most influential mathematicians of the 20th century their own.

Really, this man is a fraud. "Rockets" have been around for hundreds of years but "Rocket Science" has not. Werner Von Braun (Chief Nazi Rocket Science) FOUNDED the science of rocketry and was also the father of the US ICBM and Space program.

Why doesn't this "Dr." of Propaganda go back to the RAND corp and ask for a hand out?

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